As the friend and backer of Douglas, and later along a brilliant journalistic soldier of fortune, Forney did as much as any other man to lay the Democratic party low.
I can speak of him with a certain familiarity and authority, for I was one of his "boys." I admired him greatly and loved him dearly.

Most of the young newspaper men about Philadelphia and Washington did so.

He was an all-around modern journalist of the first class.

Both as a newspaper writer and creator and manager, he stood upon the front line, rating with Bennett and Greeley and Raymond.

He first entertained and then cultivated the thirst for office, which proved the undoing of Greeley and Raymond, and it proved his undoing.